One of the most sympathetic prosecution witnesses is Luitgard Fischer, a German citizen who was a finance director in EBS. John Kroger had his sites on her, but before he could make his move and indict, she got spooked with the threat of deportation and came forward. Kroger discusses this in his autobiography:
There is just so much evil packed into these paragraphs, it is difficult to believe that he had the audacity to publish it. I’m curious why the ETF was not interested in prosecuting low-level executives/employees. Surely if they were guilty, they should go to prison, right? But it isn’t true anyway. Look at Lea Fastow, William Fuhs, Chris Calger, Sheila Kahanek, and Michael Krautz. None of them were hugely powerful inside Enron (or Merrill Lynch, respectively.)
Furthermore, I find it amusing in an ironic way that Kroger would be shocked that people who might be under his microscope would do some research of their own. He calls it “creepy.” I wonder if he thought it was creepy when FBI agents took photographs of Joe Hirko’s house without a search warrant. Does he think it is creepy at all to publish a book in which he says he chose to come aboard the Enron Task Force because he was craving power after his girlfriend left him for another man. In fact, he even says that he was stalking her toward the end of their relationship; was that creepy at all? I think Luitgard’s googling of the “Professor” (hahahah) is completely and totally rational.
Luitgard Fischer testified that Project Braveheart – the project with Blockbuster – was fraudulent because Enron guaranteed a partner, nCube, a profit with no risk.Had such a promise been offered, it would have violated accounting rules (incidentally, it would have been a duplicate of the Nigerian Barge Deal – but with video on demand instead of electricity barges.)
“This transaction was based on accounting rules that I feel we violated,” said Fischer. She blamed Michael Krautz and her boss, Kevin Howard, for issuing promises to nCube. The jury disagreed; Michael Krautz was acquitted and Kevin Howard went to trial two times. Finally he accepted a plea deal to make it go away.
It was certainly not quite the slam dunk that Kroger had hoped.
I agree with you that what he did is unacceptable, and i beleive he did wgat YOU said he did. however that book is written by Krogger: he is a lier, criminal and unstable ( kinda like the bad guys on SVU) You have sauces that honest and to back up what he did, so why are you using the words of a lier? It is weird… Are just trying to show his mindset…..
Let me understand this: Kroger first threatens to indict Fischer, but then offers her a nonprosecution agreement if she cooperates with the Feds! In my opinion, testimony from people such as Fischer should not even be allowed at trial — it simply is not credible.
The primary difference between defendants and prosecution witnesses in the Enron Broadband trial is that the defendants refused to lie in order to get nonprosecution agreements. Many of the defendants were offered such deals, but, unlike Fischer, they refused to bear false witness against others in order to save their own skins.
It is telling that Kroger was not able to get a single credible prosecution witness without using such coercive tactics. On the defense side, however, there were actually witnesses, including people accused of being “unindicted co-conspirators”, who defied the threats of the Feds, at great persaonal risk, to testify for the defendants. In my opinion, it is the people who refused to be used by the Feds who are the unsung heroes of the sad tale of the Enron prosecutions.
LOL! “We are not engaged in a witch hunt,” says Kroger. And yet his tactics were exactly the same as the ones used by prosecutors during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. People at that time were told that they would be accused of being witches themselves unless they “told the truth” and fingered somebody else. Coerced witnesses such as Fischer are tainted — their testimony is worthless.
Right. Methinks Kroger protests too much. The analogy is apt.